Sense of Home: The Art of Richard Stout

Sense of Home: The Art of Richard Stout

Synopsis

Richard Stout's legacy as an artist is broad, deep, and firmly moored to his Texas Gulf Coast origins. Born in Beaumont in 1934, he has been painting, sculpting, and teaching in Houston since 1957, in the process creating both an influential body of work and a committed national and international following among artists and collectors.

Stout's expressionist oeuvre, possessing architectural structuralism with geometric precision, has found its place in prominent museum and private collections not only in Texas, but also nationally and internationally. His works have appeared in most major American exhibitions and have traveled to Europe, Australia, and Asia.

In this, the first retrospective study of a career spanning one of the most tumultuous and formative periods in Texas art, the editors have gathered a critical examination and meticulously researched assessment of the evolution in the artist's style and approach. Richly illustrated with representative paintings and sculptures from throughout Stout's career, Sense of Home also provides a comprehensive biographical background, illuminating in multiple dimensions the life and work of one of Texas' most significant contemporary artists.

Excerpt

William E. Reaves

As a longtime collector of Texas art and now a dealer in the same field, I have been privileged to know and work with many accomplished Texas artists. I have derived much inspiration from each of these relationships, and my admiration for these artists and their work runs deep. No artist, however, has inspired me more than Richard Stout.

On a personal level, Stout affected me immediately through his paintings, especially his poetic and sensitive expressions of the Texas coast. It is a part of the country in which we both grew up and for which we both share deep and obvious appreciation. It is a part of the country that Richard Stout interprets masterfully in his art, painting the Gulf and its endless bays and estuaries with perhaps greater frequency, acuity, and sensitivity than any other artist of his lifetime. For me, and I suspect for anyone who has ever maintained a serious, long-term relationship with the Texas coast, Stout absolutely captures its light, color, atmosphere, mood, and mystery, and he does so with unparalleled fidelity and regard. I am moved by these coastal paintings, imbued as they are with rich colors and tonalities and teeming with internal narratives that are at once both personal and universal.

On a professional level, Stout’s thoughtful personage and magnificent works of art have served to elevate my own understandings of the ongoing plight of Texas artists, making me more aware of and sensitive to the qualities of their work, especially the works of artists who choose to convey their artistic visions in more abstract modes. To this end, the times spent and moments engaged with Richard Stout and his remarkable works have always been worthwhile and memorable for me.

Over the years, through innumerable visits to his studio, as well as frequent “sit-downs” at the gallery, I have gained substantial insight into the profound vision and meticulous creative process behind Stout’s work. I have had the special privilege of observing him tease color, form, and affect from the canvases at his easel and tracking the progressive developments of his masterful paintings. He has afforded unbridled access to his extensive inventory of work, which I have explored often, receiving the benefit of his personal interpretations as well as his own strident critiques of these remarkable creations. I have sat beside him, as he opens the eyes of patrons with his nuanced insights into works on view, and participated in lively dialogues wherein he has recounted the ups and downs of coming of age as an artist in midcentury Houston. I have received so much from these special encounters, and I have never ceased to be amazed by his sensitive . . .

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